Pema Khandro, PhD, is a scholar-practitioner and teacher of Tibetan Buddhism. She is the founder of the non-profit organization Ngakpa International and oversees its projects: the Dakini Mountain Retreat Center, the Buddhist Studies Institute and the Yogic Medicine Institute.

Pema Khandro’s academic work specializes in the history of Dzogchen, women in Buddhism, and Tibet’s Buddhist yogis. She has a bachelor’s degree in Sociology, a Master’s degree in Religious Studies specializing in Tibet, and a Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies from the University of Virginia. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Buddhist Studies and she studies English, Tibetan and Chinese languages.

For more information about Dr. Pema Khandro and the resources mentioned in the episode, please visit the following links:

https://pemakhandro.org/

https://buddhiststudiesinstitute.org/

www.DakiniMountain.org

www.YogicMedicineInstitute.org

We talked about:

*Being first introduced to meditation and Buddhism at five years old and recognizing a teacher’s lesson that was 30 years in the making

*Dharma friends and finding community in the solitary nature of the path

*Pursuing scholarship as a practitioner, Dzogchen, and studying women in Buddhism

*Momo-la, divine feminine energy, and the inspiration to forgo an ordinary life and see how "a life could be like a living poetry of dharma"

*Dakini Mountain, expanse, and the benefits of practicing in the wild

*And the importance of studying the classical traditions on their own terms as well as the lived Buddhist experience